Abu Qatada released "to walk the streets of Britain"!

Abu Qatada released to relax at home

Abu Qatada is the latest bete noire of the British government and of a vast swathe of the British people. This self-styled Islamic teacher, this bearded cleric, has not be charged with anything in Britain but is generally deemed exceedingly undesirable. We're told he represents a threat to us. Well I slept soundly last night except for being awoken by my wife who thought I was behaving oddly. Flinging my arms around, apparently. She then thought it must have been the shadows. No mention of Abu Qatada.

How can this man be a threat to Britain? He's been locked up for goodness knows how long. Now he's out now under the most restrictive curfew ever imposed. Only an hour out of the house each day. Just time to do the wheelie bins and have a chat with the locals. He is electronically tagged and with that flowing beard, gone grey over it all, highly recognisable as a firebrand and madman. But how is he dangerous? During his hour out is he going to do something evil and wicked?

Nobody has yet said what his crimes are as far as the UK is concerned. He may talk drivel and generally incite people, but the powers-that-be don't see any of this as being of an indictable nature. He can't go to the mosque, distribute leaflets or say boo to a halal goose. This is all about getting him back to Jordan. Now that's fine by me, but don't con us by saying he's a terrorist or a inciter of hatred if you haven't got the proof. Such attitudes could be used against other people.

Peter Bone (what is it with these Bones?) was on the television last night waffling on about it all. Listening to Mr.Bone you might think something terrible was about to happen. It may well do, Mr.Bone, but nothing Abu Qatada might do. It will be us all suffering from kneejerk reactions and badly worded laws.

We must be vigilant against those who wish to control us and our freedoms.

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Policing the police!

Last night on Newsnight Jeremy Paxman leant across the table and huffed, "I thought you Tories were in favour of the police!". Damian Green quite rightly replied that in most situations that was correct. He had just been confirming that a police officer had suggested that he "faced life in jail if convicted of misconduct in a public office". Green said that he thought it "absurd" that such a thing had been said.

No right-minded Conservative is going to give the police a blank cheque to do or say whatever they want. On this occasion the officer who made the remark was being gratuitously menacing. It is this kind of behaviour that is getting the police a bad name.

Jacqui Smith is a hopeless Home Secretary. She does not appear concerned with the underlying problems that current policing is throwing up. It's bad enough for high-horse civil servants to use the "national security" card, but it's worse that the law enforcement agencies lack common sense and get into a lackey-type mentality of pleasing their political mistress.

What comes out of the Damian Green affair is that there was a crude attempt to scare him witless and there was a clumsy attempt to use the criminal law where civil law should have been used. This has been a divisive action.

It comes in the wake of the police raid on environmental protesters. 114 people were rounded up at a school at around midnight. Police found large amounts of equipment, including food and various devices used for climbing, cutting and locking on to machinery. They concluded that Radcliffe-on-Soar Power Station was going to be attacked. Quite properly, they felt arrests should be made. My troubling point is this. The police keep telling us they have "information obtained" but it appears that they cannot make arrests because the "evidence" isn't forthcoming. The same is happening with the Lancashire "terrorist" raid.

It's all a bit like schooldays. A teacher is lambasting the pupils because a personal belonging has been apparently stolen from a fellow pupil. "Who took Jones' satchel?" Nobody speaks! Silence ensues, with much eye contact to see who cracks first. When nobody does the teacher finally departs extremely miffed that his "informant" came up with duff stuff!

All these actions lead to mistrust on both sides. The police have a duty to keep us all free from crime and anti-social behaviour. The public has a duty to act as responsible citizens. But we now have so much blurring of the boundaries. The police have become politically corrected and some sections of the public feel only direct action works. We could end up like two sets of dogs in a park, eyeing each other up. That happened a bit at the G20 demonstrations. Some officers "up for it" and sporadically attacking the crowd. The police went into cover-up mode. Would their actions have come to light without YouTube?

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Police state? I'm still thinking!

The latest bunch of moronic menaces to trample on our wellbeing as a nation are those snoopers from Cambridgeshire County Council. These jobsworths give the Stasi the look of incompetence! They seem to revel in snooping, being underhand and generally causing the rest of us to think the worst.

Shame on Cambridgeshire County Council. The lot of them!

Nobody has apologised. They think this behaviour is normal. Well it is not. They used anti-terror legislation to prey on a shopkeeper who has employed paper boys without a valid permit.

Instead of using common sense, they act like they are control freaks. Common sense would have suggested that the council sends an officer round to see the shopkeeper to warn them of an infringement and then, polititely, say that any future infringements may result in prosecution. That would be the common sense way.

However, we live under the New Priggery Party's rule, which encourages jobsworths like those at Cambridgeshire County Council not to employ common sense. Instead, they gladly use anti-terrorism laws to crack down on hapless shopkeepers, to spy on them from cars and to shove them through the courts willy-nilly. So another criminal record, another person done down by the new order.

Get a life Cambridgeshire County Council. We do not like your ways! Andrew Lansley, the Conservative MP for South Cambridgeshire, is quite right to say, "These powers should only be used for the scope they were intended, which is to tackle serious crime and terrorism." The trouble is we have a hopeless Home Secretary and a government that wallows in these kinds of attacks on people.

From the website, "Cambridgeshire County Council's community and living pages focus on citizen's interests". Question is - Do they really?

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